I read this yesterday on the BBC, and was struck by, among many other things, the fact that this woman was put into this position in the first place. Most of all, that she was essentially turned into a criminal through the failure of the state. I also hope that people can read that, and understand the trap that so many addicts find themselves in. Instead of medical treatment they're referred to 12 step programs or told to "kick it", unless of course you can pay, of you're lucky.

The system is set up to create failure and re-offense, although I'm not arguing that it was designed that way, the result is the same. All of this comes down to a single root cause which can be addressed: the "war on drugs". It's insane, it's wasteful, it's already going to have generations of negative impacts around the world. The sooner we stop it, the sooner we can start to heal the damage.